Identity – Who are We?

I think of identity as one’s personal resonation of their behaviour, but I have also learnt that identity can also be defined by what others think of you. Many people would say different things about me. My friends would say I’m crazy and outgoing, my parents would think I’m a joker, and strangers would think that I’m a permanently angry individual. (It’s just my resting face, I promise. I’m not so down in the dumps, I spend half my life making terrible jokes.)

As per the photo above, I could say that anyone could hazard a guess of my identity if you were to look at my age, gender, nationality, race, and things like that. Well, maybe not really. People guess that I’m American (I’m English), some people assume I’m fluent in Chinese (I barely get by, that stuff’s hard), and others think I’m halfway through my uni years, and after much convincing and waving my ID in their face, I tell them that I’m actually 16, not 19, and no I’m not lying, I just look older than I am.

I’m not sure how I would identify myself, but probably somewhere along the lines of a family-centred, book-loving, outdoor-revolving individual. I’d probably throw in “free-spirited” as well, but maybe not because my parents can be strict sometimes, so that brings my free-spiriting to a limit. Different people would give me different identities, and it all depends on how close they are with me, and how much of the real me I show. I don’t think of me having a “real me”, I’m pretty similar with all my friends. The only time I don’t act normal is when I interact with new people (especially adults, because I have to behave all prim and proper). I’d say that uncovering the rest of the submerged iceberg of my personality would take time, but I’m a naturally open person. I don’t tend to hide things about myself. But traits like my learning styles, skills and beliefs would take time to figure out. I don’t even know half of them myself. It would take an outsider to tell me what I’m like, I barely notice things about myself half the time. But I do notice things about other people, so in that way I learn about other people’s identity. Or at least my version of their identity, and I guess that’s what we’re all here to learn about.